No Going Back
by Chinese Bakery
Summary: Amy thinks it's time for her to go back. The TARDIS thinks Amy's being a bit thick.


The night Amy asked the Doctor to take her back home was one of the worst nights she had ever spent on the TARDIS. Worse than the time she wandered off, almost got mangled by an angry pack of Cheetah People, and got yelled at until the Doctor's face was bright red and his hair stuck out in every direction. Worse than the time he abandoned her in the middle of a grandiose party to go flirt with a young Marie-Antoinette and jealousy twisted her stomach so intensely she nearly threw up in the bushes of the Petit Trianon's garden. Probably not worse than the time she thought he'd been executed by belligerent Vandosians, but that memory was buried somewhere in her subconscious, never to be recalled again. Ever.

"I think it's time for me to go back," Amy said softly. "At least for a little while. Just to sort out things. There are things to be sorted out. You know, with Rory."

She scratched her head and gave a phony smile, hoping to soften the blow, and waited for an outburst. But the Doctor didn't yell or pester or ramble. He didn't speak either; just stared, wild-eyed, for a very long minute.

"Very well," he finally said with a stiff nod.

The look in his eyes, though, made her want to shout, 'Wait! I take it back!'

Before she could say another word, he mumbled something about a faulty atmosphere probe and stalked out. Amy thought she could hear the TARDIS purr disapprovingly, but it could well have been the sound of contradictory thoughts colliding.

***

She didn't pack because she had nothing to pack other than a nightie that still faintly smelled of sick. There were a few gifts and souvenirs to be gathered, and that was it. She didn't sleep that night. She tossed and turned and thought difficult, alarming thoughts about past and future and the difference between what one wants and what one needs. Those thoughts were most unpleasant.

When morning came, the TARDIS wheezed and off they went.

***

Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong, Amy knew the moment she stepped out of the TARDIS, and it took her only a few seconds to understand what that was.

The air was too cold, the wind too sharp against the brownish leaves. She'd left on an early summer night. The garden had been as wild and green as ever when she'd rushed out in her nightie. A mild summer night. The night before her wedding. That wasn't something she was likely to forget, now, was it?

It was night, only not the same night. It was most definitely _not_ five minutes ago.

"We're too late," she murmured, her eyes rounding with disbelief.

"No. No, no, no, that's not possible, I precisely-"

She turned on her heels and shot him dead with just her eyes.

"You said you'd bring me back in time. You _promised_. I told you I... How long has it been? Months or years?"

"I- I'm not exactly sure."

"How can you not be sure? How can you never. Get. This. Right?" she asked, stabbing his chest with her index finger at each word. "Did you do this? Did you intentionally sabotage my wedding?"

"No! Amelia, no. I wouldn't. I wouldn't do that. You know I wouldn't."

But she was already running. She ran and ran only to find exactly what she'd dreaded: a house with a mailbox which tag no longer read 'Williams'.

"Well. That's that, I guess."

She turned to find the Doctor standing right behind her, studying her cautiously as if she was about to explode, literally explode like a time-bomb.

But she didn't feel like she had enough strength in her to blow up. Her eyes wouldn't focus properly and she didn't feel anything but the biting cold of the late autumn air against her bare legs as she walked all the way back to the garden and the relative safety of the TARDIS without once turning back.

***

Amy marched back to her room like an automaton, kicked the door shut without waiting to see if the Doctor had followed her in, and dropped to the bed most ungracefully. Her head was swimming, pitching wildly with the enormity of it all, and she had no idea where to start sorting it all out.

Then something occurred to her.

"Was it you?" she asked the ceiling as her anger brewed. "Did you actually do this on purpose? Is that your obnoxious, _misguided_ way of trying to help?"

When there was no flicker, no buzz, no response at all, Amy picked up a book she'd forgotten on her bedside table, a rare and valuable first print of _Around the World in Eighty Days_ that the Doctor had given her after one of their first trips together, and hurled it against the wall. The lights dimmed instantly.

"Oh, it's a little late to feel sheepish, don't you think?"

Her head hit the pillow and she kept quiet for a long, long time, waiting for the tears to come, but her eyes kept impossibly dry. She felt drained, powerless, and something else she chose not to examine too closely. An odd little thing that felt a bit like relief, mixed with an unmistakable touch of panic.

"Sorry," she muttered. In an instant, the air felt warmer.

***

The mattress shifted with his weight when he sat beside her. She didn't open her eyes or acknowledged his presence in any way, but didn't try to escape his hand when it lightly brushed a strand of her hair, either.

"Is there anything you want me to do?"

Her head shook imperceptibly and she was soon buried in protective arms and the familiar scratch of tweed.

"I'll find Rory," he whispered to her hair. "Talk some sense into him."

"It's the TARDIS, you know. She didn't think I should go back, I guess."

"I know."

Amy almost asked if he concurred but didn't dare to. It was a long time before either of them spoke again.

***

"Do you want me to leave?" she asked the side of his neck. "I mean, I could still go, right? I'm a grown woman. I don't need a man to anchor me to some place. I could move back home and find a job and just-"

Before she got the next words out, before she could actually offer to get on with her life, such simple words to express an inconceivable thing, the tears finally came. Salty water, resounding sobs. An impossible sadness, and the terrifying knowledge than she now had no back-up plan, no way back to life as it were.

He pulled her tighter to him until their legs were all tangled up together, and kept her warm and safe against him until she was all cried out.

***

"You could go, if you really wanted too. The TARDIS would be devastated, of course, but she'll recover. No hard feelings."

"That's not good enough, Doctor."

"I don't understand."

"Don't you?"

"You're the one who wanted to go back."

"I didn't _want_ to. I only thought I should."

"Explain."

"Take me somewhere quiet. Somewhere pretty."

"_Explain_."

"No."

"You're cheating, Amelia."

"Well, so are you."

A sigh, then, "Fair enough."

***

Amy woke up alone, to the sound of the TARDIS landing with the breaks on. She dressed in a rush and ran to the control room. For a horrifying moment, she thought he'd managed to bring her back again.

The door was open and she found him waiting outside, one corner of his mouth raised, his eyes sparkling with excitement. She blinked to the most beautiful landscape she'd ever seen. The colours were completely off, pink sky and turquoise grass and in the distance, a sea of the most peculiar colour, one she couldn't name. A light breeze made her hair dance as she grinned to her Doctor with raw, pure hapiness.

"Well, come on, Pond, go get your cozzy. You don't want to miss the tide."

Amy nodded wildly before racing back inside.


End file.
